Kem

Kem stood where its river reached the White Sea, linking the Karelian interior with the maritime world of the Pomors. It is recorded in 1450 in connection with Marfa Boretskaya's gift to the Solovetsky Monastery. The settlement and its surrounding lands consequently belonged to a monastic economy whose reach extended across the sea. Fishing, seal hunting, salt boiling and boatbuilding helped sustain the coastal inhabitants.

This shore was also exposed to war. Swedish attacks in the sixteenth century brought destruction and rebuilding, while wooden fortifications protected the settlement; a new wooden fort was erected in 1657. The early eighteenth century left a different monument in the timber Dormition Cathedral, begun in 1711, with its tall tented roofs and carved religious interior. In 1785 Catherine II granted Kem town status as the centre of a new district in Olonets Governorate. A coastal settlement shaped by monastic ownership and sea trades thus acquired a formal place in imperial provincial administration.